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The Best Winter Themed Movies

Photo: Archive Photos/Stringer(Getty Images)

If a movie is intelligently crafted it can make you feel like you’re out there besides the characters, experiencing all their adventures with them. Films with predominantly white backgrounds bring the cold out with them like White Walkers do. So get your blanket out even if you live in Miami, as these winter themed movies are sure to put the chills in your bones regardless of their genre.

Fargo (1996)

The Minnesota winter is not only one of the plot facilitators in this cult-favorite crime thriller, it’s a full-fledged character. Probably the most winter themed movie, at least of the good ones. Coen brothers set out to do multiple things with their crime thriller comedy, and one of those things is to show just how much near-constant winter influences societies and cultures, making them different from the norm. It also shows the psychological effects of all that endless white on people unused to it, as it is a perpetual additional encumbering element.

Snowpiercer (2013)

A winter themed movie that is based completely inside, inside a class-divided train that is circling the frozen Earth. Yet, the often and strongly significant view of the fully white, dead land around the tracks will make your neck shiver from the cold. And realize the privilege of even the most disprivileged people on the train. The barrenness of the snow-covered land is ever present, which some people from the north can almost relate to, and is the main facilitator of the story, as is the constant, unsolvable threat.

Wind River (2017)

A fully fledged winter themed movie, the only one that can rival Fargo in terms of how much the winter is important to the story, and on how many levels. Taylor Sheridan (Sicario, Hell or High Water) wrote and directed this crime story set to the backdrop of a snow-covered Native American reservation. A veteran tracker from the Fish and Wildlife Service allies with a young female rookie FBI agent trying to solve a murder that ends in the red snow. Another socially conscious movie by Sheridan, and one that is pragmatic and realistic in all of its aspects.

Misery (1990)

Famed story of Stephen King has two villains in it, the woman obsessed with the famous writer who starts “taking care” of him after his car accident, and the imprisoning snow. The movie’s poster itself perfectly displays the feeling of seclusion a thick layer of snow leaves on human, even when they look outside from their apartment building. Let alone from a cabin in the wild.

Eight Below (2006)

Humans aren’t the only beings that have to endure the winter, although Huskies don’t suffer through it, they enjoy it. Yet, the eight sled dogs in this movie still have a straining challenge, as they are left on Antartica alone after an expedition had to evacuate suddenly. The parts with the dogs are surprisingly well played out and there are layers to the story. One of winter themed movies that fall into the category of a family film, yet one that the parents don’t have to suffer through.